A bonus mini episode from Jo, recorded at the Young Horizons Film Festival in Warsaw — a relatively small but well-curated industry event that she reports punching above its weight. Two conversations captured at cocktail hour, both worth hearing.

First, David Kleeman on why "a good story well told" is no longer enough as a creative ambition. His argument is that kids engage with stories through three fundamental need states — wanting to be involved, wanting to explore freely, and wanting to be part of a community — and that the industry keeps accidentally frustrating all three through IP protectionism, algorithmic curation, and age-gating from social spaces. His closing point is sharp: start with a core, let the audience tell you where they want to go next, and don't try to build everywhere at once.

Then Janine Weigold former Netflix executive now consulting across the industry, on the funding gap that nobody has solved: the space between an early idea and a full commission, where animation in particular keeps falling through the cracks. Her argument is that broadcasters, ad sales teams, and private companies with audience reach could function as incubators — offering channels, expertise, and promotional muscle to help creators find proof of concept before the big platforms come looking. The conversation ends on data sharing, where Janine is unambiguous: platforms hoarding engagement data isn't just bad for the industry, it's preventing the discovery of the next SpongeBob.

Hi, this is Jo from the Kids Media Club podcast with a mini bonus episode this week collected at Young Horizons Film Festival, which I had the pleasure of attending last week in Warsaw in Poland.

It was a relatively small but really well put together conference and the opening keynote was given by David Kleeman, who in his own inimitable way talked about good stories, well told, but then went on to challenge actually what that means in the current media landscape and with all the different ways that young people can interact and engage with stories and worlds.

So you'll hear his voice first and then thereafter, I managed to grab Janine Vigold, ex of Netflix and now consulting with various clients about how we address the funding issue in kids media, how we work more cleverly and collegiately together, and how we might think about data and sharing information to sustain the industry.

So you will hear from David and Janine next.

Hi guys.

I am here in Warsaw at the Young Horizons Industry event and it's been a great day today and we are just at the cocktail hour, but I managed to grab the inimitable David Kleeman who gave the opening keynote today.

And so I just thought I'd ask you.

My favorite slide of yours, David, was it was headlined it's not just a good story well told.

And I thought it was so well put.

Just expand on that now in terms of how we build story ecosystems for.

Kids, it's something that we've said for years.

You go to any market and someone tried to tell you what they're looking for is a good story well told.

And at this point, that's wonderful.

Kids still will always appreciate a good story well told, but there are so many different ways to go about it.

It could be a good story and I want to be in it so that I get a chance to be in my favorite world.

It could be a good story that's actually a game.

It could be a good story story that's cut up into one minute, one minute segments.

There are so many ways of going about it right now that I think we have to stop thinking in sort of a traditional linear sense.

And it's interesting, I literally just posted on LinkedIn before I came down and grabbed you.

It really does force us as people who create stories and who manage ip, to not just think about resizing content for different platforms, platforms.

Now we have to think about making it native to each one.

And you talked a little bit about that in the context of need states.

Again, just tell us a little bit about those need states that really are fundamental to how Kids engage with characters.

There are really three ways that they go about it.

They want to be involved, so they want an active role.

And sometimes that's frustrated by any number of ways that the producers want to hold on to their ip.

They want to be free to explore, and that one gets frustrated by the algorithm at times.

And then the third way that the third needsgate is they want to be part of a community.

They want to take the things that they love so much and find other people who are into it and share that with them.

That's often been frustrated by being cut off from comment sections, from social media.

I saw a wonderful story the other day about kids who shared a particular interest, and they went and created their own little social space on the comments section of a National Public Radio podcast.

So that they thought, well, no one's going to find us here, so we can go and have our own little social space getting around the restrictions that had been put on them.

I love that.

And it's a great place to wrap up in the sense that we're always playing catch up, aren't we?

Kids will always be ahead of us, and we patronize them at our peril.

And really, it is beholden on us to work harder than ever, actually, to give them the opportunity to express and to create and to give them those stories that do light them up in that way that you describe.

And from what you were talking about earlier, you have to go into it, understanding the scope of your IP and all the different places that it could go.

But you have to have a core.

You have to figure out where to start with it.

If you try to do everything at once, you're going to spread your money too thin and not make an impact anywhere.

But if you understand before, your audience will come back to you and tell you where they'd like to chase it next.

Wise words from David.

We are going to do a little cheers with our glasses.

Cheers.

Nice to see you.

Thank you, David.

You know, it's fine.

Andy.

Andy, will.

Andy will clip it up.

He's.

He's a whiz.

Thanks, Andy.

Hey, guys.

So I'm here with Janine Vigold, who was on a panel this afternoon and who said something that I thought was super interesting about funding.

So it's still cocktail hour here, and I've just grabbed her to have five minutes with me to talk about funding.

So, yes, let's.

Let's talk about what you said on your panel about how testing and incubating new IP still really falls between the cracks.

We have Netflix and we have Disney that sit back and they look for creators to really pop on YouTube and then they go and sweep them up and put them on their platform.

But particularly when we're talking about animation, that requires a little bit more investment upfront that those ideas are falling through the crack.

So, yeah, tell us a little bit about your.

Your thinking on that.

I totally agree and it's actually very good to talk about money with a glass of wine in hand.

But indeed, I do think actually we need a layer between early idea and, and then full commissioning or full development.

Because on the one hand, yes, you have these great deals and if you have that great deal, amazing with Netflix or with Disney or with whomever.

But there's also a lot of AI swap that is coming up and I think in the middle, how do you finance that?

It's always easy to say, like put it on YouTube, but how do you do that?

And in that sense, I think we need to find a model where broadcasters, ad sales people, everybody works together, potentially gives for free their channels or their expertise and helps to test an audience.

Helps to build an awareness of an audience alongside the real development.

Yeah, yeah, so.

So they could be in effect the incubators.

Correct.

And I think that's a really interesting idea because they would get the credit and the halo effect from nurturing that.

And actually there is a lot that established channels like the BBC could offer to emerging creators in terms of advice and skill set.

And maybe it could also be like private companies who are interested in children's media.

Right.

It could also be advertisement or some.

Right.

It doesn't need to be only broadcasters, but people who have a certain awareness of an audience and know how they can reach them and then help creators like match them together and help creators in order to find theirs and test it out and find a proof of concept.

Clearly you also need to hop on an idea very early on, so it's risky.

But on the other hand, you de risk later.

And what I also think would be very important in that sense is that data gets more shared because clearly all these data are different and they differ, they change.

And I know that from my Netflix time.

How often did the data change that we looked at.

But I think we need to share more beyond this is the top 10 and this is what kids watched.

We need to share more like and inform the data in order to also understand what they will watch.

And I do think we can do that, but we need to share it and help other people who are not so deeply engraved in the data.

Do you think we're still coming out of that phase where everybody is very guarded about their data?

It's the equivalent of putting your arm around your homework and not letting anybody see.

But actually the state of the industry almost necessitates that we work a little bit more collegiately and share that kind of data now in order to keep the industry alive.

I do think that's important.

Yeah.

And I would really think, like all these platforms, all these streamers, it's not enough.

I mean, Netflix says like we share data now less often and others don't share anything.

And data is not just so many people clicked on it.

It's like how they rewatched it.

When did they drop out, did they finish it, did they love it?

It's so much about it.

And it's always also different.

Everybody looks at something different.

And also the spam of time is important.

And I guess actually if we put that all more together, all more on the table in order to inform everybody and inform the vets, it would be so helpful and it would lead to great content for both sides, for creators because they can create something great, but also for platforms because they get something that their audience wants.

Yeah, it's, it's a double edged sword, isn't it?

Because there, there is such pressure on always to grow.

I assume that's one of the reasons that Netflix has pulled back on transparency, because Wall street is very reactive when they don't see the numbers going in the right direction.

But does that mean that we've almost become more risk averse as an industry when really the opportunity now is to be braver than ever?

I would, I mean, yeah, it's a good argument, I do think, potentially, yes, because if you think about like people, I mean, streamers hop on creators when they already have a certain fan base and you can arguably say like, okay, that's easy because everybody can do the math.

I also still think like, you have to make the deal and everything right, and you still have to give an audience and they have to want it, et cetera.

So there's still also an upside for the creator and for the platform in it.

But on the other hand, yes, indeed.

I mean, you always hop on things that are already quite familiar, that people already love, that you already know there is an audience versus saying like, okay, we have this little, little, little diamond and it's very raw.

We don't have a lot of data, but, but we together look at the data, work on it and see where we get and have maybe also clearly, you also need some benchmarks.

When is it a success and when is it not a success?

But define these benchmarks together and from there then go into this game together and also give yourself a time frame that's not only six months, but is a time frame of we do this now for the next 12, potentially eight years, maybe 24 months.

Yeah.

And, and potentially that is where the next spongebob would be found.

That diamond that, that could sustain for 25 plus years.

Yeah.

But it, it takes, it takes the, the bravery to go and polish the diamond a little bit and then polish it a little bit more just to see if it really does sparkle.

Exactly.

But it's especially also in kids and family content.

I, I, I would say because I do believe there is something sometimes in adult content that kids things get funding early or development money early.

But in the kids and family segment, I often feel like, yeah, we always fall through the crack.

Yeah.

And it's the content that is very valuable and it's the content that also, this is your future audience, they don't go anywhere.

It's not like that.

Less children are there.

I mean, maybe, I don't know the birth rates, but it's still like children fall in love with content and children want their own content, their content.

And I think we should enable to really make that, that.

Thank you very much, Ginny.